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Madonna suggested a first meeting with Richard Corman at her apartment in Alphabet City on New York’s Lower East Side. As recalls that day, “I had to call her from a phone booth across the street “because the neighborhood was full of drug dealers, and they didn’t let people just walk in and out. There was a group of kids outside the building, on the stoop, in the hallways, and when I said I was there for Madonna the seas parted.
“I looked up the staircase, and I saw this girl leaning over the edge of the banister, and even from three stories below I could see these catlike eyes just looking down. I knew at that moment that she had something special -- I really did. She had her best friend and neighbor, Martin, with her -- he later died of AIDS—and we sat and talked. She served me a cup of coffee on a silver tray with three pieces of Bazooka bubblegum.”